Deutsche Telekom brings Firefox OS to Europe, starts in Poland
Mozilla is now set to reach a wider audience with its up-and-coming Firefox mobile operating system. We had previously heard the first handsets would be coming to Deutsche Telekom soon, but a press conference has yielded more details about what potential customers can expect.
During an announcement in Warsaw, Poland the carrier says that "sales of the Alcatel One Touch Fire powered by Firefox OS will start soon in Europe. T-Mobile Poland will offer the Firefox OS-powered smartphone via its online sales channels from tomorrow on and from July 15 nationwide in 850 shops".
PC World magazine ends print version -- will focus on digital
Print media is dying; some may argue it is already dead. With the launch of the iPad and the current industry trend of tablet media consumption, consumers don’t want to clutter their homes with stacks of paper magazines and newspapers. Not to mention, there is the trend of "going green" which is in conflict with the destruction of trees necessary to make print magazines.
Following these trends, PC World announces it is exiting the print magazine business to focus on digital editions. To be honest, it is surprising that a technology-focused publication even lasted this long in the print world.
Meet Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows Phone
Today, during its "Zoom. Reinvented" press event, Finnish maker Nokia unveiled a new handset called the Lumia 1020, which is the company's modern, Windows Phone 8 interpretation of the year-old 808 PureView.
Just like the 808 PureView, the Lumia 1020 sports a 41 MP camera with Xenon flash, Zeiss lens and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), that shoots photos at a massive 7712 by 5360 resolution and is capable of 1080p video recording at 30 FPS. But, that's where the similarities end. The Lumia 1020 packs a larger 4.5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 768 by 1280, which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, similar to the Lumia 925 that was unveiled in mid-May. On the front there is a 1.2 MP wide-angle camera that can shoot 720p video.
Cloud-in-a-Box allows developers to deploy solutions fast
Development company FatFractal has launched its new Cloud-in-a-Box solution to make it easier for enterprises to deploy software in public or private clouds or in traditional data centers.
The company's Platform as a Service (Paas) and Backend as a Service (BaaS) products allow developers to create tailored solutions without the need for repetitive steps. FatFractal CEO, Kevin Nickels says, "We've hit the right balance between out-of-the-box services like security, scalability and performance without limiting the developer’s ability to do whatever they want".
Nokia's 'Zoom Reinvented' keynote liveblog
At 11 AM EST, Nokia's highly anticipated press event, called "Zoom. Reinvented", kicks off in New York. Despite the previous "41 million reasons to zoom in" innuendo, official details are scarce ahead of the upcoming keynote.
There, the Finnish maker's followers expect the company to unveil a Windows Phone version of the year-old 808 PureView handset, which features a critically acclaimed 41 MP camera. But, speculation aside, we're are certainly looking forward to what will be revealed during the fast-approaching keynote.
Don't blame Windows 8 for terrible PC shipments
It's no secret that the PC market has slowly taken a turn for the worse. And, if we're to believe what research company IDC said in late-May, it's not going to get any better anytime soon, with shipments predicted to drop even further, by 7.8 percent this year. Furthermore, tablets are expected to out-ship PCs by 2015. Unquestionably, the future appears gloomy but, according to Gartner, the culprit is not the controversial Windows 8, as some pundits believe.
Gartner just released its latest report on the state of the PC market, which shows that Q2 2013 shipments -- which top 76 million units from all vendors, combined -- have declined by 10.9 percent compared to the same period, last year (when shipments exceeded the 85.32 million mark). "The sharp decline in the second quarter of 2013 was partly due to the shift in usage patterns away from notebooks to tablets, and partly because the PC market was exposed to inventory reductions in the channel due to the start of the transition to new Haswell-based products", says Gartner principal research analyst Isabelle Durand.
Who needs gamers? Microsoft targets small businesses with the Xbox One
When Microsoft revealed the Xbox One two months ago it pushed the next generation console’s entertainment features, playing down the device’s gaming prowess. The message was clear. The Xbox One is an entertainment hub that can do games, not a games console in the traditional sense.
Microsoft is pursuing an audience outside its (once) loyal gaming community, and having targeted non gamers with talk of TV shows and music, the obvious next step is to pitch the Xbox One as a full blown business system, right? Wait, what?
Qualcomm imagines a world without mobile phones
Most people can think back to a time when we didn’t have mobile phones, so imaging a world without them isn’t too much of a stretch.
But Qualcomm has created an amusing video seemingly set in an alternate reality where all the products and services we use today -- ranging from email, Facebook and Twitter, to video and games -- still exist, but smartphones and tablets don’t.
Nokia Lumia 925 arrives at T-Mobile next week
US mobile operator T-Mobile just announced that the Nokia Lumia 925 will officially join its Windows Phone 8 portfolio starting July 17. The handset goes for $49.99 down coupled with $20 monthly payments over the course of two years.
US is the third major market where the Lumia 925 will be available, following its introduction in Germany and UK. The Nokia-branded Windows Phone will run on T-Mobile 4G LTE network and is among the least expensive high-end devices in the mobile operator's portfolio.
Opera lets you create a Smart TV app from your web videos
Norwegian browser developer Opera has teamed up with video sharing site Dailymotion to create a new service that can transform any Dailymotion video channel into a Smart TV application in less than a minute.
Opera TV Snap lets you convert an existing online video channel into a ready-to-run HTML5 app for inclusion in the Opera TV Store, a Smart TV app storefront supported by major television and set-top-box manufacturers.
Georgia Tech’s $7,000 polyester masters in computer science
In case you missed it, the Rambling Wrecks of Georgia Tech will next year begin offering an online masters degree in computer science for a total price of just under $7,000 -- about 80 percent less than the current in-state tuition for an equivalent campus-based program. The degree program, offered in cooperation with AT&T and courseware company Udacity, will cost the same no matter where the students live, though two thirds are expected to live and work outside the USA. Time to complete the degree will vary but Georgia Tech thinks most students will require about three years to finish. The program is inspired, we’re told, by the current hiring crisis for computer science grads -- a crisis that anyone who reads this column knows does not exist.
Programmers in Bangalore will soon boast Georgia Tech degrees without even having a passport.
Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse for Windows 8 [Review]
Windows 8.1 has been designed to fix some of the apparent shortcomings of its predecessor, but unless you're using the Preview version you'll have to wait until August to get your hands on it. In the meantime the software giant has released a new peripheral which aims to provide a more immediate fix to the problem of using Windows 8 with a mouse.
The concept of the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse is simple -- you rub your thumb up and down on a touch sensitive, blue-colored button located on the left side of the mouse (sorry lefties!) to navigate apps. Clicking that blue button brings up the Start screen. This should make navigating Windows 8 much easier, and sounds great, but how does it perform in actual use? I purchased the mouse to find out.
Microsoft extends Windows Phone 8 support lifecycle, will add enterprise features to grab business users
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it will extend the Windows Phone 8 support lifecycle to three years, effectively doubling the previous 18 month time-frame, which was revealed in mid-March.
"Beginning with Windows Phone 8 we'll make updates, including security updates, available for 36 months", says Microsoft's Tony Mestres. "These updates will be incremental, with each update built on the update that preceded it". So far so good. But now here comes the kicker -- your device may or may not receive the future software upgrades.
Chrome 28 adds richer notifications, implements new Blink rendering engine
Google has released Google Chrome 28 for Windows, Mac and Linux. The latest version of its open-source, cross-platform web browser sees Google implement the latest revision of its web rendering engine -- Blink -- and also give apps and extensions a better platform for interacting with users outside of the main browser window.
As part of the switch to a "richer" notification system, Chrome introduces a new Notification Center, which works independently of the browser via the taskbar or menubar. Already present in Chrome OS, the center currently only appears on Windows builds with this stable release, but will be extended to Mac and Linux shortly.
Apple App Store turns 5, celebrates with free apps
In the real world, when you have a birthday people give you gifts. But when these celebrations happen for software and services, the roles are frequently reversed. That is the case today as Apple celebrates the fifth birthday of its iTunes App Store by giving gifts to its customers.
Apple launched its iOS store on July 10, 2008 and the number of apps has grown exponentially since then -- from 500 apps at launch to 900,000-plus available today.
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